Missing in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Mystery/Romance Series) Read online

  Copyright 2013 by Jana DeLeon

  Published by Jana DeLeon

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people, except through author-approved sharing programs. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Chapter One

  Maryse Robicheaux LeJeune stepped out of the shower, dried off, and pulled on her robe before stepping into the bedroom. Her husband, Luc, had left for work ten minutes before, a lingering look of worry on his face as he’d walked out the front door. Maryse knew whatever case he was assigned had him rattled more than usual, but all her attempts to broach the subject had been met with stonewalling on his end. The only thing she’d gleaned from him was a fear for her safety.

  Keep all the doors and windows locked and when you leave the house, take your gun. When driving, make sure you check your rearview mirror to ensure no one is following you. Do not go into the swamp for any reason. If you have a world-ending emergency there, let me know and I will make plans to take you out myself.

  Being a DEA agent, Luc was always cautious, but the past week, he’d really gone to a different place. And despite the fact that she tried not to dwell on whatever dangers Luc faced every day doing his job, Maryse was jittery and on edge. The hot shower had momentarily helped, then she’d stepped out of it to hear a repeat of Luc’s admonitions before he left for work, and she’d launched right back into a case of nerves.

  As she passed the bedroom doorway, she saw a shadow move in the living room. Instantly, she froze, her heart pounding in her chest. What if the bad guy Luc was worried about had been watching the house? What if he’d waited for Luc to drive away so that he could kill her or kidnap her or even worse? A couple seconds later, her cat, Jasper, scrambled into the bedroom and slid under the bed.

  Maryse inched over to the nightstand and pulled out the loaded nine millimeter with suppressor that was always there. Gripping the gun tightly, she crept out of the bedroom and down the hallway, struggling to keep from hyperventilating. With every step, she said a silent prayer that all the training Luc had given her with the pistol paid off.

  When she got to the edge of the hallway, she heard rustling on the other side of the wall. Before she could change her mind, she jumped around the corner, gun leveled.

  The man in the black mask stood at the far end of the dining room near the kitchen counter. Maryse screamed and fired off five rounds in succession. Her aim was dead-on, but the bullets passed right through the man and struck the hutch behind him, glass exploding with every shot. A second later, the man started screaming, and Maryse knew it wasn’t a man at all.

  “Damn it, Helena!” Maryse yelled, not sure whether to stop shooting or go back to her bedroom for more ammo. “What are you doing in my house?”

  “Why are you shooting at me?” Helena wailed. “You know I hate that.”

  “Because you look like a burglar. Why are you dressed all in black?”

  “No one else can see me, so I figured why not?”

  “I can see you and I thought you were here to kill me.”

  Helena waved a hand and the black mask vanished. She glanced back at the mangled hutch, then gave Maryse a sheepish look. “I guess I didn’t think about you seeing the outfit and not knowing it was me. Sorry.”

  “Sorry? Sorry! You have two seconds to get out of my house or I start firing again.”

  “This was just a misunderstanding,” Helena said.

  “One. Two.”

  “Oh shit.” Helena darted through the wall.

  Maryse ran out the front door, waving the pistol, and chased her down the street all the way to the woods a good two blocks away.

  Maryse skidded to a stop at the tree line and stared into the foliage, deliberating taking a parting shot at the ghost, but finally decided it would be a waste of a perfectly good round. Frustrated at the mess of glass she was about to have to address, not to mention the probable need to purchase a new hutch, she dropped her arm to her side and headed back up the street to her house.

  She hadn’t made it half a block when Sheriff Colt Bertrand walked out Big Freddie Pinchot’s front door and stopped dead in his tracks, staring at her.

  Crap. I’m wearing a robe and holding a gun. I’m going to get a psych hold.

  And that’s when Maryse decided that Colt might just be the most intelligent person in Mudbug. Without so much as the lift of an eyebrow, he dug his truck keys out of his pocket, jumped into his vehicle, and drove away without even a backward glance.

  ###

  “You can’t just walk up to someone’s kitchen window and steal their pie.” Jadyn St. James stood in Mildred’s office at the Mudbug Hotel, hands on her hips and frowning down at Helena Henry, who was practically inhaling the cherry pie on the desk in front of her. The fact that the rather large ghost was decked out like a cat burglar in black spandex was even more troubling than the stolen pie.

  Mildred, the hotel owner, stood next to her, shaking her head. “We had this discussion last year before you left. You’re a ghost, Helena. You don’t need to eat. You can’t possibly.”

  Helena looked up at them, red cherry pie filling dripping down her chin. “But I want to eat. Do you realize that I can’t get high cholesterol or diabetes, and I won’t gain a pound from this? Now tell me you wouldn’t do the same.”

  Jadyn looked over at the plump hotel owner and knew she’d just lost her ally. No matter how much Mildred hated Helena constantly stealing food from her hotel refrigerator, she wasn’t about to let it make her a liar. Jadyn had little doubt that given the criteria Helena listed, Mildred would spend every day eating like Helena was right now.

  For that matter, so would Jadyn.

  She looked down at Helena and sighed. “Okay, I get it. At least, as much as anyone can. But you can’t steal things in broad daylight from people who can’t see you, although that’s probably a blessing. But you’re going to give someone a heart attack. Not to mention that you’ll make it impossible for Colt to do his job when people start reporting the thefts, and then residents will give him holy hell for not arresting the bad guy.”

  Helena waved a hand in dismissal. “Sophie Jenkins is an old drunk. Everyone is just too polite to say it. So even if she reported a whole bakery marching out of her house, no one in Mudbug would believe her, least of all Colt.”

  “I hate to say this,” Mildred said, “but she’s right. Sophie’s sorta known for her outlandish statements. A floating pie wouldn’t so much as raise an eyebrow in this town.”

  Jadyn threw her arms in the air. “This town cannot be your personal buffet.”

  “If they had a decent buffet around here,” Helena complained, “it wouldn’t be a problem. Not like anyone would miss an egg roll or two or a handful of popcorn shrimp. I tried the high school, but it was horrible! It’s no w
onder half of the kids sneak out behind the school and smoke pot at lunch.”

  Jadyn closed her eyes. “I did not just hear you say that.”

  “I said—” Helena started.

  “No,” Jadyn said. “What I meant was, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that part about the students, and that if you’d like to repeat it, you should do so in front of the sheriff.”

  “He can’t hear me and besides, why should I be the one to tell?” Helena asked. “One of his deputies was out there last week smoking with them.”

  Jadyn looked over at Mildred, who didn’t look any more pleased with that bit of information than she was.

  “Okay, bottom line,” Jadyn said. “You don’t steal food from anyone who is not a drunk. And don’t steal from anyone who can’t afford the loss.”

  “Fine,” Helena grumbled. “You two act like I’m an archcriminal.”

  Jadyn shook her head. “I can’t believe I just endorsed stealing food, albeit under specific terms.”

  Mildred patted her on the back. “Knowing Helena tends to skew normalcy a bit.”

  Jadyn opened her mouth to reply but before she could get a word out, the front door to the hotel opened and slammed shut.

  “Helena!” Maryse yelled from the lobby. “Don’t think you’re getting away with it.”

  Instantly, Helena dropped the piece of pie she’d been holding, jumped up from the chair, and ran through the wall behind her. A couple seconds later, Maryse stormed into Mildred’s office, her face flushed red.

  “Where is she?” Maryse demanded.

  “She just ran through the wall,” Jadyn replied, wondering what in the world Helena had done to get her normally even-keeled cousin so angry.

  “I’m going to kill her.” Maryse stared at the wall and yelled, “I’m going to kill you!”

  For a split second, Jadyn wondered if it were possible to kill a ghost—which would solve a lot of problems—but then figured Maryse’s rant was rhetorical and not literal. “Should I even ask?”

  “Oh, you should ask all right. Then when I have Sabine exorcise her back to whatever pit of hell she crawled out of, you won’t feel a bit of sympathy.”

  Mildred looked over at Jadyn and raised an eyebrow. “What happened?”

  Maryse took a deep breath and then unloaded on Jadyn and Mildred, filling them in on her less-than-stellar morning.

  “The hutch that I gave you as a wedding present?” Mildred asked.

  Maryse nodded. “It’s riddled with bullet holes now.”

  Mildred put her hands on her hips. “I may just have to kill her myself. That hutch was a family heirloom.”

  Jadyn cringed, quickly deciding silence was her best option.

  “That’s not even the worst part,” Maryse said. “One of the vases on the hutch that I shot was daddy’s urn.”

  Mildred paled and Jadyn’s hand involuntarily flew up to cover her mouth.

  “I must have grazed the top of it,” Maryse continued, “because it fell onto the dining room rug and the top part broke off. Which would have been a situation that was salvageable except that while I was chasing Helena down the block, Jasper decided it was a perfect spot for a new litter box.”

  “Holy Mother of God!” Mildred made the sign of the cross.

  Jadyn felt her stomach clench. Next time she saw Helena, she might be tempted to try shooting her, too.

  Maryse flopped into an office chair. “I rolled up the whole mess in the rug and tossed it in your Dumpster. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Mildred sank into the chair next to her. “Your daddy is in my…oh, well.” Mildred grabbed a magazine off the desk and started fanning herself. “I don’t want you worrying about this. I’ll give you half of my ashes, and we’ll find you a sturdier urn.”

  “Do they make them bulletproof?” Maryse asked.

  Jadyn’s hand slid from her mouth and she looked back and forth between the two women, a million thoughts racing through her head. She assumed Jasper was a cat and he’d committed the worst of offenses with Maryse’s dad’s ashes and ruined a perfectly good rug. But why in the world did Mildred have some of Maryse’s dad’s ashes? Was it a Mudbug tradition? Some weird agreement among residents? And where was Mildred keeping her portion? Because she was going to be a lot more careful around vases now that she knew what might be contained in them.

  In the midst of her mind storm, a flash of an old friend—an artist welder—went through her mind. “I might know someone who can handle the bulletproof urn thing. Let me check into it.”

  Maryse and Mildred both stared at her for several seconds and finally Maryse smiled. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re really going to contact someone about making me a bulletproof urn?”

  Jadyn froze, wondering if she’d misread the situation. “Yeah, I mean…that’s what you want, right?”

  Maryse nodded and sniffed. “I’m not good at girlie stuff, but that’s so nice, I don’t even know what to say.”

  Jadyn looked down at the floor and shuffled her feet. If Maryse was “not good” at girlie stuff, Jadyn was practically allergic to it. “Seems like the right thing is all. You helped me get the game warden position here, and you and Mildred have really made it easier to fit in.”

  “I brought you here and exposed you to Helena,” Maryse said. “If I were you, I’d kick my butt.”

  Jadyn smiled. “Maybe after I’ve had more coffee.”

  Maryse rose from the chair and nodded. “I think breakfast sounds like a great idea. Shall we head over to the café?”

  Jadyn’s stomach rumbled and Maryse laughed.

  “I guess that’s my answer,” Maryse said.

  “Watching Helena eat must have made me hungry,” Jadyn said. “Hey, would it be horrible if I had pie after my eggs?”

  “I hope not,” Mildred said, “because that’s what I plan on doing. Let me put up the sign.”

  They followed Mildred to the front desk where she put the “Back in thirty minutes” sign on the front desk.

  “I don’t have anyone booked for today, so no check-ins,” Mildred said and she switched the phone to voice mail. “If anyone shows up without a reservation, they can come back in thirty or sleep in their car.”

  “Perfectly reasonable,” Jadyn agreed. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

  They crossed the street to the café and Jadyn automatically gravitated to a vacant booth in the far corner. She’d quickly learned that Maryse and Mildred’s topics of conversation were not always the “for public consumption” type, especially with talks of Helena thrown into the mix. Sitting in the back, away from the other patrons, allowed conversation with no leaning over the table and whispering. Leaning and whispering got in the way of eating. And right now, Jadyn was starving.

  Maryse and Mildred nodded approvingly at her selection as they slid into the bench across from her. A pert waitress popped over a couple of seconds later to take their order and leave a decanter of coffee. Jadyn poured a round for everyone, took a big drink, and decided she may as well get answers to the questions roaming through her mind.

  “I have to ask,” Jadyn started, looking directly at Mildred, “and if you don’t want to answer, just tell me it’s none of my business, but why do you have some of Maryse’s dad’s ashes?”

  “Maryse’s mother died when she was four, and afterward her daddy was understandably a mess,” Mildred explained. “But a child doesn’t stop growing or needing things while their parent gets their life together, so I stepped in and did my best to give Maryse a maternal connection.”

  “You were wonderful,” Maryse said. “Still are.”

  Mildred blushed a bit. “Taking care of Maryse meant I was around an awful lot and after he stopped grieving so hard, well…”

  “You started a relationship,” Jadyn finished. So much about Maryse and Mildred’s relationship now made perfect sense. She’d known the women were close but hadn’t realized that Mildred had essentially stepped in to raise Maryse right after her mothe
r’s death.

  Mildred nodded. “We started as friends at first and stayed that way for a good long time. I wasn’t anxious to jump into anything. I got no problem being a self-supportive woman. And Maryse’s daddy loved her mother more than anything. It took a long time for him to decide he wasn’t being disrespectful to her if he cared for me.”

  “But you never married?” Jadyn asked.

  “No, and that was fine too. We were both older and stuck in our ways to the point that living separately was better for us than living together. I honestly don’t think we would have lasted if we’d been under one roof.”

  Maryse nodded. “I loved him to death, but Daddy was the most difficult man on the face of the earth. Mildred and my mother should both be up for sainthood.”

  The waitress stepped up to the table and slid plates in front of them. Jadyn seasoned her eggs and dug in as soon as everyone had a plate. For several seconds, the only sounds coming from the table were of satisfied customers.

  “You know,” Jadyn said, “Mudbug may just have the best food I’ve ever eaten.”

  Mildred nodded. “I definitely think the catfish are the best here than anywhere else, but there’s a woman in Sinful, a bayou town a little over an hour from here, who makes banana pudding that is so fantastic there are actually city ordinances about it.”

  “No lie?” Jadyn tried to imagine what sort of laws could be cultivated around dessert.

  “No lie,” Mildred said. “I was visiting a friend one weekend and managed to get a bowl. It was downright heavenly. I tried to coax the recipe out of the café owner, but she said she’s taking it to the grave.”

  The bells over the top of the café door jangled and they all looked over to see Colt stroll inside. As he walked toward the counter, he looked their direction and smiled. Jadyn immediately felt heat rush up her face, but as he turned around and she looked across the table at Maryse, she realized the grin may not have been for her benefit. Her cousin looked simply mortified.

  “What’s up with you and Colt?” Jadyn asked.

  Maryse gave them a guilty look. “I may not have told you guys everything that happened this morning.”